


there is magic in the night, when pumpkins glow by moonlight (run, little girl, they see you in the dark)

by debeauharnais



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Long Shot, Pre-Season/Series 01, Spooky AU, but hey we also know shit about the others and the whispers so maybe this really does happen, have i mentioned i love them, it's really just a whole lotta bonding because we deserved more father daughter bonding, so all i can do is scare the ass off them and force them to bond in a survival situation lol, they're both my babies and they both deserve the world, veeery mild canon divergence, we were ROBBED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 18:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21343069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debeauharnais/pseuds/debeauharnais
Summary: Every year when the sun goes down on October 31st, when the jungle is black and twisted and the muggy wind howls through the fig leaves, the ghosts come back.
Relationships: Benjamin Linus & Alex Rousseau
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	there is magic in the night, when pumpkins glow by moonlight (run, little girl, they see you in the dark)

**Author's Note:**

> this is set before season one, when alex is fifteen. in my mind, she probably didn't begin her relationship with karl until a little before the crash of flight 815, like two or three months before, but for the sake of my rambling brain that didn't even know where this fic was going as i was writing it, they're already in a relationship now :')
> 
> there are a few elements of this fic borrowed from another, much longer ben-centric that i'll get around to posting one day, but it's mainly just to do with his and alex's characterisations. so, keep an eye out for that one too! ❤︎
> 
> if you're interested in the playlists i listened to while writing this, my spotify name is lilbumblebean ❤︎ enjoy, lovelies!! x

It happens every Halloween. They’ve just gotten used to it.

Every year when the sun goes down on October 31st, when the jungle is black and twisted and the muggy wind howls through the fig leaves and the temperature drops to the lowest it ever does on the Island, the ghosts come back. The whispers are granted corporeal form for the night, granted the chance to settle their unfinished business and enact revenge on those who killed them in the hopes of finally being released by the Island, of finally being free to move on – a sick little experiment in justice and righteousness, a last chance at peace offered by an Island so very devoted to being fair. For one night a year, the dark, humid jungle is alive with voices and screams and taunts, with screeching birds and rustling in the undergrowth. For one night a year, the killed come back.

But it doesn’t affect him, and Alex doesn’t know the full truth of why she isn’t allowed in the trees on Halloween night, and so he’s never really had a reason to be bothered by it very much at all. Beyond the Barracks, they find the viscera and entrails of the vanquished the next morning – gruesome deaths: stalked like prey, far beyond help, left to barricade themselves in, scramble up trees, run, hide, try to stay as quiet as possible in the hopes that things not quite of this world won’t smell their fear. But they’re always alright, untouched and carefree while the creatures creep through the trees beyond the tree line. The black smoke isn’t the only thing the sonar fence was designed to keep out.

And, oh, he’s heard second-hand stories from people who survived the night of judgement and it’s frightening stuff – only the one guilty of the whispers’ death can see them, meaning no one else can help them survive when the dead come searching. No live together, die alone – tonight, you’re on your own with the ghosts of your past calling out your name. Some try to reason with them. Some try to free them with pleading and apologies, and once or twice the ghost whispers “thank you” and fades into peace. Most of the time, it’s a game of survival, the pawns scattered across the Island like deer and running for their lives through the darkness. And their hunters, they look human, but so very many things can look like people in the dark. On Halloween night, they resemble little of the beings they might once have been, and God help them if their prey die before they find their vengeance – God help them if they’re condemned to centuries of wandering in the dark. Their minds are twisted by hysteria and grief and rage, deaf to appeals to the person they once were, unless you can break through past the hate to the better nature, the lost, the frightened, the forgotten.

Turn out the lights and stay quiet, the old warnings say – there’s a killer in the night and they’re coming after you.

They know what you did.

But in here, they’re safe. They throw scary movie nights, and pass around sickly sweet treats and baked goods, and fall into their beds some time before the sunrise, when the ghosts fade back into whispers and their howls fade into the misty sunlight over the ridges. Mikhail is brought into safety from the Flame, and he makes the most wonderful pumpkin punch and black forest cupcakes and passes them around with his apron still knotted around his waist. Colleen knows the best spooky stories, or spends the whole year making up one of her own to scare the children with over a little fire she always burns by the gazebo, with her face contorted by shadows and the stars flickering beyond the smoke and the sparks. Richard joins in every once in a while; the rest of the time, he spends the night pacing along the fence, staring out into the jungle like he’s hoping to see someone. Tom makes the tea and the coffee and spends the weeks leading up to Halloween making Colleen any props she might need; and Danny lurks in the doorway with a rifle, just in case the sonic fence isn’t enough; and Ethan decorates the houses and the trees with giant spiders and twinkle lights; and even Juliet, though she usually declines the invitation and stays at home instead or slumps silently at the back of the room while the victims scream and the violins wail, sometimes smiles when she gives the children a few pieces of candy each.

This year, he was looking forward, with a wary sort of hopefulness, to spending the evening with Alex, to reconnecting over the films she always loved as a child, to finding their way back to each other over tooth-rotting sugar and putting the last unpleasant months behind them.

But that’s not what happened.

Alex used to love Halloween. When she was younger, she liked her birthdays the most – she was the spoiled daughter of the king and she loved being fussed over and worshipped. As she got older, as the first seeds of doubt and disenfranchisement began to grow and the world around her gained another fracture, she shied away from attention a little more, started to resent the adoration everyone presented her with just because they were afraid of her father.

Then, that final day in October started to represent wilderness and freedom and danger and adventure, started to represent something greater, something bigger, something _more_ than these houses and this Island she’s been pacing the boundaries of since she was a child – and that’s what she came to yearn for.

But this year, it just means she has to spend the night trapped in a room with her father. She knows every line on every person’s face, knows every shirt they own and which one made which casserole – she’s known them her whole life, has never known anyone else, and she’s tired of it. She’s chomping at the bit, tearing at the harness and the prison bars. She’s tired of her father, of his stifling love and his hatred of Karl. Her whole life, he’s wrapped her in bubble wrap to stop her getting hurt, deflected questions about what’s beyond the Island with topic changes and vague sentiments, raised her on books and caution and home-cooked meals like he was trying to tame and contain some dangerous flame inside of her. He never snapped at her, never raised his voice – after a while, she started to wonder if there was something in his childhood he wanted to spare her from – but somehow all that mild _sameness_ was worse. Everyone else could climb trees and light fires and scuff their knees, and she was treated like a fragile porcelain doll.

Somewhere along the way, the stories he told her started to wear at the seams, and inconsistencies started to unstitch themselves from the threads, and she started to think, _I’m meant for more. I haven’t been a child in a long time. If he won’t be honest with me, I’ll go out and find my own truth._

And that’s how the first crack had formed – so quiet, so small, just a hairline fracture. It had only gotten worse from there, because once she got that first taste of freedom, once she realised being the daughter of the king made her a princess and princesses had crowns and swords of their own, she wanted more. And then there’d been Karl – and then there’d been fights, and slamming doors, and the quiet treatment from the both of them until he offered her pancakes on the third morning of silence, or she begrudgingly offered him a book from Colleen’s library she thought he’d like, and the fights started again a day or two later because she was every bit his daughter and she could be just as much fire as he could be ice – and then it had spiralled into something dark and frightening and hateful.

And so, this year, she’d been planning to spend as much time away from _Ben_ as she could manage. She and Karl had planned to steal some of Mikhail’s cupcakes and some wine from the secret stash Greta kept in her television cabinet and make their own Halloween out in the jungle – maybe see some ghosts beyond the fence if they were lucky. Karl didn’t like that part of the plan as much. He was the scaredy-cat, she was the daring – the practical, the dreamer, the fearless.

That’s where this story begins.

“You’re the best,” Alex says, the last word muffled when she throws herself at Juliet in a tight hug. She has a comforting smell, soap and earth. Beyond the Barracks, the world is beginning to soften into golden hour, darkness leeching into the sky above the treetops like ink on parchment and the birds singing their last songs and the sun melting into liquid orange.

“Just be quick,” she replies in that lazy drawl of hers, resting one palm on the back of Alex’s head and giving her back a quick rub before letting her go. She looks down at her, eyes hooded and face serious. “I’m not risking my ass just so your boyfriend can get caught.” A little smile. Alex grins back. She likes that about Juliet – she’s the only adult who doesn’t treat her like porcelain, who curses in front of her and doesn’t worry about her _delicate sensibilities_.

“I will, I promise!” She always puts so much effort into sounding grown-up and experienced, but she can’t contain the way her voice pitches up in excitement. Right about now, Karl will be pickpocketing still-warm cupcakes through the kitchen window of the house Mikhail shares with Ryan when he comes to stay, and everyone is busy decorating the rec room with pumpkins and candles, and all she needs to do it get a picnic blanket from the cupboard in the hallway. Her dad’s out of the house with Richard – she sprints across the clearing, along the path under the tree, hops onto her front porch—

“Alex!”

She freezes with her hand on the doorknob and flicks her eyes to the sky, letting out a frustrated breath. “_What?_” she grates out without turning around, hooking one ankle over the other and slumping where she stands.

After a moment, Ben appears behind her with that soft, determinedly hopeful smile on his face – and she thinks, _oh, it’s one of _those_ days. _One of the days where he pretends their fight yesterday didn’t happen and they can somehow go back to how they were two years ago, when she was happy to just be another safe little doll who didn’t dream of the whole world. “We’re meeting at seven,” he reminds her after a moment of just smiling at her, voice so painstakingly gentle and even, like he’s hoping she’s just _forgotten,_ like he’s giving her a quiet warning in case she’s planning _not_ to meet at seven.

_Yeah, I know,_ she wants to snap back, _we always meet at seven. Nothing here ever changes. If we ever met at 7:15, the world would implode. _“Can’t wait,” is what she replies instead, with a forced, sickly smile that turns to a glower when she turns back to the door and pushes it open—

Ben grabs the door handle, his hand over hers, and forces it back shut, his eyes still creased with that smile that’s starting to look a little more strained. Alex turns to face him with an indignant glare and a curled lip, hackles starting to raise. She snatches her hand away. Now that she’s the same height as him, eye-to-eye, she can’t believe she ever thought he was some kind of hero. “I was hoping we could take a walk out to th—”

“Why would we take a _walk?_”

He stares at her for a moment without blinking, that smile still frozen on his face. Around them, golden hour has given way to soft gloom, all long shadows and a cool breeze; the cicadas begin to buzz. It makes the world feel suffocating and far too close, like it’s pressing in on her. She wants the wide open spaces and the sea. “If you would allow me to finish, _Alex,_” he replies, voice that special kind of frayed that only she can achieve. A pause. Anyone else might find it threatening, and maybe that’s the intended affect. To her, it’s just _dad_. “I need someone to help me check the fence before we settle in for the night.”

Part of her wonders if he _knows_. “Can’t someone else do that?”

“Yes, but I didn’t ask someone else. I asked you.”

“Isn’t it safe?”

A frustrated glance to the side, a ruffled little shrug. “Of course it’s _safe_.”

“It’s the _fence_ – it’s the same tonight as it always is. Why do we need to—”

“_Alex_.” It’s not a warning – it’s a _please_. A tired, half-defeated _please_. He meets her gaze, wide-eyed and silent. She meets his. That treacherous guilt, that childish need to make her father happy and be a good daughter, prickles in her gut.

“Fine,” she mumbles, loping off the porch with one big stomp and shooting a look towards Mikhail’s house. She wonders if Karl’s been caught, or if he’s waiting for her at the tree line, wondering where she is and what’s taking her so long. Worry churns with the guilt. “Whatever.”

“Good. Thank you.” Ben dips his head to her with one of his little nods and offers her a wide smile. Rearranging the strap of his messenger bag across his shoulder, he lets out a happy little breath and leads the way across the clearing towards the trees. Wordlessly, she falls in step beside him, deliberately hopping onto a different leg when they end up automatically walking in time with each other. Even if he doesn’t look at her, keeping his eyes straight again, the tight little smile on her father’s face is enough to tell her he noticed.

They walk in silence past the swing set and into the trees. The last hints of evening are slowly fading into night, the stars hidden behind wispy clouds and the crescent moon a hazy orange. It’s as cold as it ever gets on the Island, the humidity of the day meeting with the crisp night-time wind whistling through the leaves and forming a soft, eerie mist. She’s far too used to the Island to be afraid, but it certainly does feel like Halloween. She tugs the sleeves of her hoodie over her fingertips and slips her hands into her pocket. Every so often, she swears she feels something brushing against her arm, or hears someone breathing her name from the cold gloom of the jungle. The wind picks up, howling and ferocious and shrill, madly shaking the leaves and rattling the branches, and she steps a little closer to her father.

Neither of them break the silence as they descend the dark slope towards the fence. The pylons are no more than black shapes against the blacker jungle, silent guards standing watch over the trees. In the mist-specked darkness, she trips over a clump of prickly grass and stumbles forward, her heart racing with nerves despite herself. Ben snaps his hand out to grab her arm and steady her. She shrugs him off roughly and raises one of her legs to itch at the ankle the stubbly grass had grazed. Her father waits for her patiently, fingers overlapping on the strap of his satchel and gaze lost to the pitch-black jungle; when she stomps forward, he follows. The moon watches them like a cloudy eye, its shine frail and pale and casting far more heavy, suffocating shadows than light.

Stomping her feet together with a pointed flourish, Alex stops in front of one of the softly buzzing pylons and gives it a hard, bitter smack. The sound is dull and hollow and metallic. “There. Good to go. Are we done?”

Ben isn’t looking at her; she knows he heard him, but he turns his head to gaze down the row of pylons that disappears around the hill instead. She’s about to repeat the question with the addition of an irritated _“dad?”_ when he says, “let’s check the others.”

She lets out a growling scoff – her temper is getting shorter and shorter by the day – and drops into a crouch, yanking open the control panel and gesturing to the bright green inside. It looks ghostly in the cold moonlight, too vibrant, too bright, too _new_ amidst all this ancient wilderness. “Dad, look, it’s fine.” Her voice sounds shredded, annoyed by too little, too soon, a victim of overexposure to her father’s constant drama – either he’s making a big deal out of nothing, or he’s pretending everything’s okay, or he’s shutting her down. “Why are you being so paranoid?”

“I’m not being _paranoid,_ Alex, I’m being _careful_.”

She shoots back up to her feet, tilting her head to the side in mock earnestness and pursing her lips like she’s sympathising with his struggle. “Oh, yeah, _careful_ – wouldn’t want any monsters getting in, right? Might kinda ruin the potluck.”

He lets out an exhausted breath, temper splintering a little bit more. He opens his mouth—closes it—slaps his palms against his thighs in defeat. Plays the victim, just like he always does when they fight. She’s so tired of it. “I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“What, and you want me to explain it to you?”

“Yes, Alex, maybe if you told me what I’ve done wrong I might actually be able to—”

“How am I supposed to say anything to you when you just put on your _Benjamin Linus_ voice—” She waves her hands in the air like, _ooh, wow,_ “and act like, ‘yes, Alex, of course, Alex’, but you never actually hear a word I say! You never _listen_ to me – you just pretend to so I’ll stop.”

“Of course I listen to you.”

“Then why won’t you just accept that I love him, _dad?_” She spits the word _dad_ like it’s poison, like it’s beneath her, like it’s made of hate.

“Tell me, have I ever been anything but polite to Karl?”

“Yeah, y—”

“No, let me finish. I welcomed him into our home. I let you spend all day running around with him – I let you miss our movie nights, I let you eat dinner with him instead of me, I let you come home at all hours of the night and don’t say a _word,_ and then the one time I ask you to keep your bedroom door open, suddenly I’m the bad guy. He can’t say two words to me – _you_ have _no_ time for me anymore – and still I’ve tried to be nice, and pleasant, and make conversation. Tell me, Alex, how am _I_ the villain for loving my daughter?”

“Because you’re _not_ nice! He’s _terrified_ of you!”

“Well, maybe he should be.”

And all she can do is _laugh_. She gapes at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open – and then she’s laughing, with disbelief, and anger, and _frustration_. He frowns at her like he can’t make sense of her, then he rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue in annoyance and looks away. “Yeah, real nice, _dad_. Maybe I should ask your permission before I _breathe_ next time.”

“Don’t turn this around on me just because you’re upset.”

“Oh, you’d know all about manipulation, wouldn’t you?”

He sets his gaze on her, cold and hollow. She glares back unblinkingly. Before she’s quite caught up to her own thoughts and acting purely on destructive, petulant impulses, Alex drops back into a crouch, disarms the fence, and stalks through it with heavy, striding steps. “Alex,” Ben says behind her, like he’s hoping she’ll reach the trees and come stomping back, like he’s counting on his daughter seeing reason and obeying. When she keeps walking, his shout is more frantic. “_Alex!_”

She feels herself disappear into the trees where the moonlight doesn’t quite reach; the jungle around her is cold and stifling and _watching_. “Go away.”

Alex hears her father hurrying clumsily through the undergrowth a moment before he grabs her arm and spins her around to face him, eyes huge and wild and half-lost to the darkness; she rips herself away from him and turns back to the dark, heavy jungle. “It’s not _safe_.”

She stomps sulkily along, arms crossed over her chest and chin tucked into her hoodie. “Leave me alone.”

Her father’s voice is rushed, panicked, almost undone as he scrambles after her. “Alex, you need to come back with me n—”

“I don’t need to _do_ anything.”

“I am not saying this as your father, Alex, I am saying this as your leader: we need to turn around and get back behind that fence—”

She spins around to face him. “Or _what?_”

He finally loses his temper, snapping, “If you would let me _finish_—”

A screech splits the air. And in that moment, the jungle isn’t a mother – it’s an archaic world of ghouls and monsters, dark nights and howling winds, creatures prowling on the midnight moors beyond the locked window and faces screaming from the fireplace. It’s hands reaching from beneath the bed and hot breath on the glass and children with stitches for eyes, it’s spines snapping as monsters change and howling from the marsh and birds that know your name and everything unknown lurking in the shadows behind you – it’s everything that shouldn’t exist.

Ben freezes, and that terrifies her more than the sound. His eyes scan the dense jungle around them with little jerks of his head, mouth hanging open as he circles on the spot; she backs against him, staring out at the trees on her side, and she doesn’t move away when he reaches behind him and shakily takes her hand in his. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, her lungs aching and her eyes burning. Swallowing thickly and finally finding her voice, she whispers shakily, “what was th—”

“_Shh_,” Ben hisses, squeezing her hand painfully. They both fall silent. Her heartbeat throbs in the small of her throat, frantic and pounding and painful, sharp enough to make her fingertips shake. Hot adrenaline floods through her veins, heightening every sense to the point of pain and echoing deafeningly in her ears. Goosebumps prickle down her arms as another icy gale washes over them, colder than anything.

They listen. The jungle around them trembles, ink-black and dangerous.

And the screech comes again, bloody and sick like it’s being pulled out of a monster’s throat by an iron hook. More than anything, it sounds like a hunting cry.

“_Go_,” Ben breathes – and then they’re running. She hardly feels the earth beneath her feet, hardly feels the leaves whipping her face – there’s only her father’s hand in hers, and the screaming turning to frenzied howls of laughter, and that horrible, insane feeling of something chasing after them where something shouldn’t be.

They run and run and run, through grass taller than the both of them with the tips of the stalks clacking together above them, through a moonlit copse of palm trees with the black silhouettes of the trunks looming over them like featureless monsters watching them run for their lives like prey, through a shallow stream with the pebbles rolling and clattering under their feet like the Island is laughing at them – and, when the screaming has faded into distant, muffled howling in the distance and they can’t run anymore, they stop in a dark clearing surrounded by pitch-black trees and criss-crossed with long, inky shadows.

Neither of them say anything; they just stand there in wild silence, listening. Alex can hear her father breathing sharply through his nose in short little gasps, and she knows he’s trying so hard to keep his composure, to stay in control. She’s never seen him like this, never seen him as anything less than Jacob’s chosen one. Never seen him as _prey_. He’s always been the fox and she’s always been the cub growing her own set of teeth – watching, learning, waiting.

And then she realises: the fence.

“I didn’t turn it back on,” she blurts out, the sound of her own voice, too loud and too sudden, making her jump. Ben doesn’t reply. “Everyone back home,” she continues, desperate for a reaction, for a confirmation, terror-hot anger making her voice shake and rise as she rounds on him; when she speaks again, there’s a broken squeak to it, “they’re just _sitting_ there—”

“I know,” he answers, clipped and abrupt, still not looking at her. His pale blue eyes glint eerily in the pale moonlight.

“Well, what are we gonna—”

“I’m thinking.”

She stares at him, frustration and fury almost chasing away the fear. And then she realises: for the first time in her life, her father doesn’t have a plan. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They’ve reached the end of the script and now they’re running blind. The terror seeps back in. She clutches at her elbows in a loose hug and spins in a slow, unsteady circle, staring into the black jungle around him. Even the cicadas and the night-time birds sound like hunters out there. “But…” She hates how childish her voice sounds, how blubbering and broken, how desperate she is for an answer, how easily she falls back on the old belief that her father knows everything. “But what do they want with me? Why can I hear them? What did I ever do to them?” She takes a frantic step forward, eyes wide and head tilted, like she’s trying to make him believe her, like she’s afraid he’ll think she’s a killer. Her voice crackles over a sob. “I didn’t _do_ anything, dad.”

She’s not one of the _guilty_.

He doesn’t look at her – and then he does, meeting her gaze with a miserable frown and soft eyes, and she knows that for all their fighting and their locked horns, he never wants to see her like this, and all he wants to take away her fear and offer her comfort – and then he’s looking away again and the ice is back in his eyes. “No. But someone else did. I’m afraid you’ve become a victim of someone else’s crimes. Let’s go.”

Ben heads towards the trees, staring straight ahead with wide eyes like he’s trying to find the ghosts before they find him. Letting out a rough, frustrated little squeal, Alex hugs herself tightly, glances over her shoulder and around the clearing, and hurries after her father. _Who?_ She wants to ask. _Who’s crimes?_ But she knows if he hasn’t already told her, he isn’t going to. So, instead, she hisses, “where are we going?”

“There’s nowhere _to_ go, Alex. We just have to keep moving.” _If we stay still, they’ll hunt us down,_ is what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to. The sinking feeling that floods her gut is enough to tell her that.

“Wel—shouldn’t we go back to the fence?”

“The _fence,_” he replies without looking back, “is where _they_ are. We can’t go back that way anymore than we can just turn and face them.”

She stops, curling her lip in wet-eyed disgust. “So, we’re just going to leave everyone back home to die?”

Ben spins around in frustration, looking around like he’s searching for the right words and slapping his palms against his thighs. “No, Alex, believe it or not, I quite like having my people alive. We’re going to circle around and find an alternate route back to the fence.” The phrase _alternate route_ makes her chest ache with fear. Her father knows the Island better than anyone – if he has no idea where they ought to be going, if he has no clue where they won’t be…

She stares at him for a long moment. He stares back, like he’s challenging her to argue further. When she doesn’t, he dips his head and keeps walking. With a look over her shoulder into the waiting darkness, she picks her way quickly after him and falls in beside him just before he vanishes into the shadows.

For a long time, there’s silence. Then: “I’m sorry.” When he doesn’t ask what for, she continues, a little more heated and defiant, because she hates apologising even more than he does, “I’m sorry for dragging us out here. It’s my fault if they die.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Anger begins to prickle in her gut when she starts to think he isn’t going to answer, when she starts to think, _maybe I’ve pushed too far this time. Maybe he’s given up on me. Maybe I’ve kicked him too hard and this is it. _She’s always been able to count on her father being her punching bag. She throws insults and tantrums, she defies his authority and goes where she isn’t supposed to go and makes a fool of him in front of everyone, and he never bites back. He always takes it, and he always forgives her, and he always makes two cups of tea even when she’s sulking in her room and doesn’t force her to speak when he brings it to her with the perfect amount of sugar and milk.

She’s the daughter of the king – she can do all the things that others would be branded and exiled and executed for, and they have to put up with it because of who her father is. She knows they tell him he should discipline her, that he spends half his time handing out pardons instead of warnings. But he never does. She always counts on that. Lately, she’s started pushing the boundaries even more, seeing just how much she can actually get away with before he finally snaps, before he finally gives her something more than that same dull, stable monotony. And the answer is: a _lot_. Maybe this time, she’s reached the very edge of the invisible boundary she’s spent her whole life mapping out.

Then, at last, he replies, in that voice that would be emotionless to anyone else but that she can hear the gentleness in, “They’re survivors, Alex. They’ll be alright.”

And that’s not what those words mean. They mean: _it’s never your fault. I love you._

Alex wants to cry just as much as she wants to hate him. She can’t quite manage either.

She opens her mouth, to say something or just to let out a heavy breath as her heartbeat slows and the adrenaline trickles back out into the cold—

“_I see you, Alexandra! I see you—!_”

The terror is like an explosion. She startles – and the voice is so close behind her, like it could reach out and touch her, like it’s on the other side of the shadows – and then they’re running again. She feels the ghost trampling after her more than she hears him – Ben drags her blindly through lashing monstera leaves and whipping fern fronds, and all the while there’s that voice behind her, young and male and ruined, and she realises something, at the back of her mind behind the terror and the wheezing breaths: he’s not speaking English, he’s speaking French, and somehow, somewhere, she understands him.

“_Do you know our names?_” It shrieks, and as he says it, suddenly there’s more than one trailing wildly through the undergrowth and howling her name, like he had summoned them from the earth. “_Do you know what you did to us, little bitch of a whore? My name is Robert, and you killed me._” It’s hypnotic. She wants to stop running. She wants to let them take her. She feels herself slowing—feels her mind losing itself to a warm haze— “_Run fast, Alexandra, I’m right behind you—”_

“Here.” Her father’s voice snaps her back to the black jungle – a split second before he jerks her sharply to the right, almost pulling her shoulder out of its socket—

And then they’re falling blindly through the darkness, barely touching the dirt and the tree roots and the vines clinging to the earth, and just as her still-foggy brain catches up to what’s happening and she opens her mouth to scream for her life, they crash and roll against the jungle floor. She coughs and hacks, rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself up on stunned, shaking arms and letting out terrified gasps that slowly turn to out-of-her-mind sobs. She can’t get enough air—she can’t breathe—there’s only the fear, and the feeling of falling, and the echo of her own name ringing in her ears.

She feels her father reach out and rest his hand soothingly on her back, like he’s telling her it’s alright at the same time he’s telling her to be quiet – and suddenly she’s grounded, and she can breathe, and she lies there in the mud and the darkness, listening for the voices and the footsteps on the wet leaves.

Silence – they’re both lying in the positions they landed in, not daring too move, breathing with their mouths open, silent as death – she can taste the cold, damp jungle air on her tongue, like slow rot and decay where usually it’s freedom and life – and then, at the crest of the hill, there’s a whisper and the crack of a twig.

This time, Ben doesn’t have to grab her. She’s up at the same time he is, scrambling backwards in an inelegant crab scuttle on her hands and feet and falling back half against her father’s chest and half against a vine-laden tree trunk. Ben hooks his arm around her protectively – and, sitting there in the darkness, staring out at the thin, frail shafts of moonlight washing over scraps of leaf litter and the ghostly, hunched figures picking their way down the hill like half-formed memories, she remembers two things she’d heard on very different days in very different stages of her life and her beliefs: one, they can’t see you any better than you can see them; two, the Island wants you to live. And, in that moment, she knows that’s true: the Island is her mother, and its darkness is her veil, and she loves it fiercely.

They hold their breath, and the silhouettes disappear back into the black, and they’re alone.

Neither of them speak for a long, long while, still listening for footsteps and hissing until they fade into the still, quiet night that suddenly feels very much like it’s holding its breath, no wind or thwacking leaves – then, roughly disentangling himself from her: “Why did you stop?” Ben’s voice is furious, in that terrified sort of way she’s only heard once or twice, when she came home crusted in her own blood from falling out of a tree, or when she tried to make him tea for his birthday when she was seven and scalded her hand with boiling water instead.

Her father’s spiky hair is mussed and damp with sweat, his crisp, clean peach shirt dark with dirt and rain. It feels more real than these past few years combined, seeing him as something other than the neat, perfect king. He feels so much more human, so much more like the father he used to be. She can feel her own hair sticking to her clammy cheeks, comforts herself with the knowledge she’s lost to the shadows.

It takes her a moment to find her voice; when she does, it’s wet and unhinged and on the tail-end of a gasp. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.” It feels like a lie. “What did they say?”

“You can’t _hear_ them?”

“Of course, I can’t. I didn’t kill them.”

Alex is laughing before she can stop herself, breathless with disbelief. “Neither did I!”

He glances at her and hesitates, like he’s suddenly realising how callous that sounded, like he’s remembering he’s the father, not the general and she’s the daughter, not the army. He licks his lips and offers her a hurried, apologetic nod. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, Alex. This is… this is as new to me as it is to you.”

She stares at him, her heartbeat thudding against her ribcage and making her stomach ache. The bark of the tree behind her scrapes against her back. Even through the frustration, the realisation that her father had been running on her fear alone, that he couldn't hear the voices, couldn't hear the footsteps, but was still doing everything he could to save her like it was his own life at stake, makes her feel all the things she's been stubbornly refusing to acknowledge for so long. “Are you serious? Your whole life, you’ve never seen one’a these things before?”

“No, I thought now might be the perfect time to joke around a little—yes, I’m serious. The rest of our people have their own sanctuary, we have the Barracks. And they’re not _things_ – they’re the souls of the undesirably deceased.” He says that like if he had a skeleton in front of him, he’d step on the ribs and crush them to dust instead of step around them – like he has no respect for the dead, like they’re just bones and the stupidity of poor survival skills, like he’s annoyed by them just as much as he doesn’t care. _They’re the souls of the undesirably deceased_ sounds much more like an insensitive dismissal than a correction.

Alex doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything. The silence is disturbed by Ben foraging for something in his bag; he pulls out his water bottle, unscrews it, hands it to her, waits for her to take a few gulping mouthfuls before letting himself drink. They sit there for a moment longer, catching their breath and preparing themselves for the journey ahead. With a soft sound in the back of his throat like he’s willing himself to go, Ben is the first to rise—

“_I know you’re out here, Ben._” Her father freezes – and it’s the first time that night she’s seen him truly _afraid_. He doesn’t unfreeze, doesn’t move, just stays where he is, crouched between the gnarled roots of the tree behind them, wide-eyed and breathing in sharp little bursts through his nose. She reaches up and tugs at his hand desperately – _move, dad, please, come on_. He doesn’t seem to feel her; his mind is somewhere else, cast back into deep, dark memories. “_I’d know the smell’a you anywhere – always so _clean_. Always so damn _respectable_. Not like your old man – oh, no_. _One’a the perks of bein’ dead, kid: you’re so much more _awake_. Don’t miss a goddamn thing._”

A damp, guttural laugh that makes the hairs on her arms rise. Dry leaves crackle on the ground on the other side of the tree. Even in the darkness, she sees her father’s eyes widen impossibly, his mouth opening like it’s all he can manage on the other side of paralysis.

Alex snaps her head around to look behind her, listening, watching, searching for any sign of movement in the jungle beyond the curve of the tree trunk, imagining the terror of a face popping up a breath away. Seeing nothing, she turns back to Ben and tugs on his hand again, shifting more onto one knee. “Dad,” she hisses, voice strangled, “_please_.”

He starts and suddenly looks down, meeting her gaze like he’s seeing her for the first time. Without saying anything, he falls back heavily beside her. “Dad, we need to go.” He nods, still seemingly unable to manage a word, and licks his lips before snapping his eyes up to the moon-specked canopy like he’s gathering the courage— and peering around the side of the trunk.

“Come on,” he breathes back to her, fumbling for her hand and pulling her after him. Alex shuffles forward as silently as possible, waddling in a crouch and resting one hand on the grimy trunk for balance. The leaves shift under her feet, sodden and muddy—

“_C’mout, son,_” the voice calls from somewhere close behind them, on the edge of a horrible, slurred laugh, “_I just wanna talk is all._” The edge around the trunk, fumbling over the roots by touch alone and slipping on the damp leaf litter. And then, in one horrible second, Ben steps on a twig. He freezes, holding his breath and staring straight ahead like if he’s very, very still, the sound won’t carry. Alex stays where she is, not daring to move, eyes darting left and right through the darkness.

And then the footsteps quicken.

“_Pretty girl,_” the voice says, from very close by. Her breath quickens to short, frantic gasps – he’s right behind them – she can imagine him reaching out— “_Doesn’t have our eyes, though, does she?_”

Alex lets out a terrified, screaming wail at the same time Ben booms, “Alex, _run!_”

They both scramble to their feet, sliding on the wet moss and splashing through the mirror-black puddles, and grab for each other’s hands as they tear blindly through the midnight jungle with hardly enough light to avoid the trunks until the very last second. The ghost gives chase—and then, suddenly, he’s not the only one running after them. Out of the silence comes a second voice, and a third, and then more frantic footsteps than she can count – dozens and dozens of ghosts risen from the mist and the frail, eerie moonlight.

A hazy, feather-light rain begins to fall through the leaves, turning the world to fog. They stagger through it for as long as they can before everything disappears – no trees, no moon, no undergrowth, only pale, silvery mist swirling around them. Alex spins around in a panicked circle, letting out high, breathless sobs; she looks down and her feet are lost to the fog. Her father stands still, clutching at his bag with one hand and looking around like he’s just as lost as she is. There’s an odd taste to the fog, something wrong, something that burns at the back of her throat, something that makes all her cuts and open wounds sting, something like a poison that’s forgotten how to kill.

Through the veil of mist, the voices scream, no more than the disembodied howls of the unseen dead. She can hear them fumbling around through the undergrowth, still searching for them.

“_Took you into our home, Benjamin_—”

“_Amy and I treated you like our own son, gave you the food off our table, pretended we didn’t see the black eyes and tape ‘round your glasses ‘cause we didn’t want you to feel embarrassed, wanted you to feel normal, _loved—”

“_I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so pathetic_—”

“_When I catch ya, kid, I’m gonna peel the skin off your_ bones—”

From the fog, a hand snatches out – “Dad, look out—!” – her father is pulled back into the mist. Letting out a frenzied yelp, Alex throws herself forward and grabs onto his hand before he disappears completely, lashing out blindly at whatever’s holding him, kicking up dirt and stones – “Alex, let me go,” he orders, trying so hard to be the hero while his eyes reflect all the terror in the world; “shut up, I’m busy,” she snaps back – and then the blows connect, and the ghosts howl with pain and fury like they’re feeling it all at once, and Ben staggers backwards.

Without waiting to see if they’re really safe, Alex grabs his hand and yanks him after her through the haze and out the other side, back into the clear, black jungle – after the fog, it’s alive in screaming clarity. They race through the darkness, along squelching banks, down slopes, through trailing vines and bamboo thickets and thin, spindly pines. Circling around the huge trunk of a ficus, they collapse between the towering roots.

When her pulse stops thundering in her ears, she realises she can hear the ocean, faint and gentle. It almost makes her laugh – they’ve ended up pretty damn far away from the fence now. Swallowing against the scratchy pain at the back of her throat, she tips her head back against the trunk and looks over at her father. With a spark of horror, she realises he’s picking gingerly at the shredded arm of his shirt; blood has leeched out and soaked the fabric, turning it black and glistening. Through the darkness, she can just see the scores fingernails have torn into his skin. “Dad,” she chokes out, because it’s all she can manage. Looking down, she realises there’s blood under her own fingernails from where she’d raked through the fog.

“I’m fine,” he answers immediately, wincing as he rolls the tattered sleeve up to his elbow.

“Lemme see.” She sits up on her knees and gestures at him.

Ben turns to look at her with a wry smile and tired eyes, still clutching his forearm with one hand. She knows he wants to bite something back. Instead, he murmurs, “alright,” and holds out his arm for her to inspect. Ever since she was a child, he’s always encouraged her, always shown genuine interest in every strange and flippant interest, always pinned her art to the refrigerator, and addressed her stuffed toy dog with a straight face when she announced he was her official spokesman, and listened intently when she lectured him on things he probably had an encyclopaedic knowledge of. He never made her feel stupid, never made her feel wrong or foolish for her grim fascination with plagues or her phase where she only wore orange. She could go through a hundred interests in a year or get stuck on only one, and he’d care just as much for each and every one of them.

And now, when she offers to assess the wounds on his arm, he doesn’t say _I hardly think you’re qualified_ – he says _alright_, because she’s his daughter and he’s raised her to believe she can do and be anything. She wonders if he ever regrets that. If he’d crushed her curiosity and her fire, she wouldn’t be such a headache.

Alex gently holds his wrist, and picks dirt and grime from the blood, and remembers they have a water bottle, and pours water over it instead; and all the while, Ben sits back against the trunk and stares out at the jungle with a small smile, eyes flicking back to her every once in a while before glancing away again, like he’s afraid the moment will break if he makes her self-conscious.

With a grunt, Alex finally slumps back beside him. “Thank you,” he says gently. She grunts again in response and he huffs a quiet laugh, rolling his head to the side and gazing out into the darkness.

After a long time, she asks, voice quiet like the question is a dangerous secret to ask, “how come I could see them?” _The dead are only visible to the guilty_ – that’s what she’d always been told. _I’ll never be guilty,_ she’d thought when she was little, _so I’ll never see a ghost._ It had been a slightly disappointing realisation.

It takes him a moment to answer. “You’re my daughter, Alex,” he replies at last, voice raw and laid bare. “The crimes of the parent are passed to the child.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything. She could ask what precisely he’s guilty of, but there’s something about unveiling the side of her father she’s never seen that still makes her feel uncomfortable. Much as she rails against him, much as she likes to insist she’s a mature grown-up, she still wants to keep her selfish, innocent view of him for a little while longer. She’s not quite ready to pull back the curtain and find a murderer. He’s her father – he wears pastels and goes to book club and still puts smiley faces on her pancakes with syrup; he can’t be dangerous.

“Why did you bring me out to the fence, dad?” is what she asks at last, voice soft and near-broken. Near-broken, half-broken – never completely destroyed. She’s a Linus, whether she likes it or not; survival is in her blood. Survival, at any cost.

He lets out a little huffing laugh and smiles, small and rueful and self-deprecating. He doesn’t look away from the undergrowth in front of them, still absently holding his forearm with one hand. “I wanted to spend some time with you, alone. Is that so terrible?” When she snorts and looks away with a mocking shake of her head, he adds, almost playfully, “sounds kinda silly now, doesn’t it? Homicidal ghosts: the perfect father-daughter bonding activity.”

She grins despite herself, tipping her head to the side and resting it momentarily on her father’s shoulder. “Kinda cool, though, I guess.”

“That’s one way of putting it – thank God I have you to see the positives of being hunted by man-eating dead people.”

Alex snorts again, pulling her knees up and hooking her wrists around them. She picks absently at the skin around her fingertips, worrying at the grazes from their tumble down the hill. “You’re so lame.”

For once, the silence is comfortable instead of tense. After a moment, Ben looks at her and murmurs, “thank you. For saving my life.”

The old fifteen-year-old self-consciousness makes her skin prickle. She tucks her hair behind her ear and shrugs, tucking her chin into her throat. “No one makes Sunday morning waffles like you. It’d kinda suck if I lost that.”

Ben hums a laugh, turning his head back to gaze out at the darkness. Alex feels around for rocks on the ground, piling them all up in a little heap, half for protection in case another ghost finds them, half to keep her hands busy and give her something to fiddle with and something to do. When they’re arranged in a messy little pyramid, she picks up two leftovers and rolls them around in her palm, clicking them together. He saves her, she saves him, he keeps her safe, she keeps him safe – she’s not a useless accessory, someone to be shielded and stifled; she’s a wild thing, the daughter of the king, a Linus. They’ll keep each other alive, just like they always have.

Without fully knowing what she’s going to say, and partly just to see if he’s dozed off, she asks, “Dad?”

“Mm.” He still sounds awake; he’s just been thinking. Beyond the trees, the waves crash and fizz, soft and far-away like a fading dream.

She grins to herself in the dark, voice catching on a laugh as she says, “Tom’s waffles are actually better than yours.”

In the light of the moon, she watches her dad rest his head back against the trunk and grin, his eyes creasing up as he laughs, real and free and true – and it’s a rare thing, to see that toothy grin instead of the tight-lipped smile the rest of the world knows. “I just didn’t wanna hurt your feelings,” she continues, laughing that kind of chocked-up laugh that’s just a _release_ – there’s nothing truly funny, it’s just laughter, to let go, to heal, to forgive. And he laughs with her, and she laughs harder, and it feels like being free, like the wound of the last year that’s begun to gape and bleed is finally healing.

After a moment, when the laughter has subsided into unsteady breaths and the breaths have subsided into silence, he speaks up again, quiet, like it’s a desperate confession he doesn’t want to lose the nerve to say, “I just don’t want to lose you, Alex.”

Self-consciousness makes her face burn; she looks down uncomfortably. “Dad—”

“Not to Karl, that’s not what I mean. I just don’t… I don’t want to wake up one day when I’m old and grey and realise I’d lost the person I care about the most because of stupid mistakes and stupid fights.”

She lets out a breath. “You’re not gonna lose me, dad.”

“Although, it would be nice not to have the sink always full because someone can’t wash their own bowls after they’ve—”

“_Dad_.” She hits his arm and he sniggers, shaking against her with the force of the close-mouthed laughter. Alex grins lopsidedly and rolls her eyes.

“I’m proud of you. I hope you know that. I don’t know how it’s possible for one person to be so stubborn and infuriating and bull-headed—” She shoves him roughly. “—but I wouldn’t change any of it. And I’m so in awe of everything you’ve become. It’s an honour, Alex, to be your father.”

Alex swallows around a lump in her throat, nodding stiffly and tucking her hair back behind her ear when it flops forward into her eye. “Right back at ya,” she murmurs after a moment, looking up and meeting his gaze with a tiny smile. Something releases into the cool night air, something soft and gentle and whole. The cicadas buzz and the waves foam and the breeze through the pine needles brings the smell of new growth and growing things, and they’re alright. Leaning back, she says, “I wonder what they’re watching right now.”

“Something awful, I’m sure. I always dread Danny’s turn to pick the movies coming up.”

“It’s my turn next year, y’know.”

Ben hums low in his throat. “_Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?_”

“A classic.”

“Squashed tomato cookies?”

“You know it.” A pause. The smile falls. “Are you sure—”

“Tom’s phone rings when the fence has been disarmed for more than ten minutes. I didn’t tell you earlier because I was annoyed with you, but they’re not sitting ducks. They probably haven’t even noticed we’re gone.”

A soft rain begins to fall, whispering through the tree tops and sparking off the ground in gentle flurries. It’s magical and wild and _home_. They murmur into the early hours, safe from the ghouls and the hunters – about stupid things, things that don’t matter and that somehow mean the world. They talk about black and white films and radio horror shows; they talk about the hole in Alex’s satchel, and, sleepily, how he can mend it if she doesn’t have the time; they talk about the grocery list for the next time Tom leaves the Island (frizz-free, curl-taming conditioner and chocolate biscuits), and the favourite hoodie Alex lost in the last laundry load that he says he already folded and put away in her dresser, and whose stir fry is better, and when Alex says she’s ready to get rid of her stuffed animals, she can tell he wants to protest, but he doesn’t, and even though she knows he’ll just pick them out of the trash and hide them away in a box in the hallway closet, she doesn’t mind.

They talk about boring, unimportant, mundane things, like if DHARMA tea bears a closer resemblance to Twinings or Lipton, and whether they’d rather face a horse-sized goose or a hundred goose-sized, carnivorous horses (they both agree on the single goose), and the trailing plant that needs to be re-potted on the porch, and memories of her third birthday – and eventually, the quiet chatter dissolves into a drowsy game of _I Spy_, and that dissolves into ‘I-Say-One-Word-You-Say-The-Next-And-It-Makes-A-Story’ with more giggling than words, and then everything simply dissolves into heavy-eyed silence and warm hearts.

And at the end of it all, there’s just this: Alex curled up against Ben’s chest with his arms wrapped around her and his heartbeat echoing in her ear, like he used to hold her when she was a child. There’s just this: falling asleep in his arms while the jungle howls around them and the rain mists down, safer than she’s felt in years. There’s just this: a father and a daughter and an Island that became a mother to them both.

And when dawn washes over the jungle, rosy and cloudy and dew-soft, they trek back home, slow and exhausted and happy despite the lingering sadness at leaving the freedom of that night behind. The golden sunlight glints on the raindrops dripping from the leaves and collecting on the tall grass, and the birds emerge from the shadows and sing their morning songs, and the ghosts fade back into whispers, and when they reach the fence and the end of their adventure, Alex starts the hug, and Ben buries his face in her hair and gently kisses the top of her head, and everything feels better. They’ve found their way back to each other. They’re alright. They can start again.

And when they step up the porch step and into the house, it’s that heavy, comforting familiarity that comes with bone-deep exhaustion – everything smells the same, warm like spice and carved wood and the old dust of libraries, and the early morning shadows fall the same, and the sunshine through the red curtains in the kitchen is feathery and delicate and safe, and it’s _home_. They make tea and hot cocoa, and put on some old movie, and fall asleep on the couch during the opening credits, her head on his shoulder and his cheek on her hair. And it feels like it does in the fairytales, when the heavy, old book closes on a flowery _End_ and the dust blooms into the soft morning sunshine and everything is alright.

The next week, the fights start again.

The next year, she says the words _I hate you_ for the very first time.

The next year, she spends her sixteenth birthday with Karl and doesn’t touch the breakfast with the flower beside the plate and the smiley face on the pancakes, and a plane falls from the sky, and a man named Keamy hands her a radio and gently says, “tell your daddy goodbye.”

When he wakes up, he can still feel the weight of Alex in his arms. He lies there for a moment with his eyes closed, and he can still hear her breathing, and he can still smell the fruity shampoo she used to use, and she’s _there_.

And then he feels the stubbly grass digging into his back. And he hears the birds beginning their morning song, and he sees the soft orange of the sun against his eyelids, and the world sinks back in.

He lies there for a long time, trying so hard to hold onto the memories, onto the quiet happiness, onto the _realness_ of it. He holds onto the feeling of holding her again, onto the sound of the ocean and the chill of the air on that Halloween night.

And then he opens his eyes, and Hugo is sitting by the last of the campfire cutting up a mango, and Alex has been dead for longer than she was ever alive. They’ve freed the last of the whispers from their hate, and the ghosts have been freed, and Halloween is just the same as any other night.

He takes a breath and collapses back against the leaves, feeling all the light fade out into the air and all that familiar, heavy emptiness creep back in. Most days, it’s alright. Most days, he’s almost happy. He has a place. He has a purpose. Hugo is kind, and the world is quiet, and it takes a long time to unlearn all the fear and the violence and the manipulation, to remember he’s _safe_, but he does. Eventually, he learns to simply live, and simply breathe – to walk through the jungle without his mind constricting around a dozen back-up plans, to walk along the beach and look out at the water without falling back on the constant state of stress that had become a coping mechanism and a comfort.

The old stations grow over, and the jungle reclaims its severed limbs, and the world heals; the paint peels from the Flame and the old wood crumbles, the Swan disappears beneath ferns and vines, the Hydra rusts over and the engines whirs down for the very last time, leaving the island quiet and gentle as the sea lapping at its shores. The Island can hear it in a way it hasn’t been able to in a very long time, a daughter freed from chains and returned to the water.

The light is soft and golden in a way it never was back then, and Island needs him in a way it never did before, and he loves it in the way it needs to be loved, not with the frantic, desperate devotion of a boy with a father who never wanted him and no mother.

But sometimes, the grief comes back. The anger faded a long time ago, but the grief never left. He wonders if it will ever let him go, wonders if that’s the problem, wonders if it’s waiting for him to let it go instead.

“Morning, dude,” Hugo greets him with that easy cheerfulness, like he doesn’t see him every morning, like he’s as happy to see him now as he was twelve hours ago. “Were you dreaming? You were doing that weird twitchy thing Vincent used to do when he was chasing boar.”

He hums a soft laugh. “Mm. I was remembering Alex.”

“Oh. Dude, I’m sorry. Did you… did you wanna go visit her today?”

Ben smiles, small and gentle. Slowly, the heartache gives way to the rosy morning sunlight, and the guilt gives way to the breeze in the treetops and the warm air, and he can breathe. Hugo holds out a half of the mango, and he takes it, and sitting there with him, a little more of the pain exhales into the quiet dawn. “I’d like that.”

“She knew you loved her, man,” Hugo says when he stops chewing and swallows a mouthful of mango. “You know that, right? She didn’t believe any of that stuff you said. She knew you were tryna save her. You were her dad, man. She knew that.”

And at the end of it, that’s all he ever really needed to hear. And the sun filters in, and his ribcage feels lighter, and for the first time in years, his heart can beat without hurting. “Thank you, Hugo,” he murmurs, and if he cries, no one’s going to tell. He’s not the same scared boy running from his father and wailing into the silence beneath the crown he forced onto his own head. He can cry, because he’s safe, and he’s free, and he stopped being a king a long time ago. The light is a lot softer nowadays. And he thinks, _that’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear._ “Thank you for saying that.”

**Author's Note:**

> in case it wasn't obvious, the ghosts chasing alex were rousseau's team, because danielle was pregnant with her when she murdered them and that crime was passed onto her daughter. 
> 
> the people chasing ben were roger and the DHARMA initiative, specifically horace - alex could hear and see them for the same reason she could see the french team, because, as his daughter, she was held accountable for the murder as well. 
> 
> it was meant to end on a sad note but i can't do that to my boy. and, fun fact: halloween 2004 was the day boone died and aaron was born ❤︎


End file.
